“The whole thing is just so disturbing and so tragic,” Corman, R-Centre County, said in an interview with The Patriot-News Editorial Board on Wednesday. “As the father of two boys, to think that kids went through that, who were going to a place looking for help, it’s tough. It’s tough to imagine.”

The Second Mile, a State College-based charity established in 1977 by Sandusky to help at-risk children, is transferring all of its active programs and $2 million in cash to Texas-based Arrow Child & Family Ministries, which has pledged to continue its youth-oriented programming.

The move was made after The Second Mile’s board saw its financial support drop off following Sandusky’s November indictment by the state attorney general’s office on charges of sexually abusing boys whom investigators say he befriended through his work with The Second Mile.

The charity’s interim CEO, Dave Woodle, could not be reached for comment on Wednesday to provide an update on that transition to Arrow, which has a Pennsylvania affiliate in Altoona.

Corman, who joined the charity’s state board in 2010, said seeing its programs continue under Arrow is a positive for those who invested 30 years of their time and money in The Second Mile. Until last year, this was a well-regarded charity that served 10,000 Pennsylvania youths annually and many of them had a good experience from it.

“But to think that someone was using it as a way to — if it indeed turns out to be true — to find victims is just horrifying. It’s horrifying to everyone who was a part of it,” Corman said.

The charity’s board, meanwhile, awaits the findings of an internal investigation. The probe led by the organization’s general counsel and former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham is exploring how much employees knew and how much was shared about the sexual assaults that have been alleged against Sandusky.

Efforts to reach Abraham on Wednesday were not successful.

Corman said he anticipates that her investigation will conclude soon.

The demise of The Second Mile as an organization doesn’t diminish the reason it was initiated, Corman said.

“The goal is to hopefully learn, and if we’d have stayed alive, put practices into place to make sure it never happens again,” he said. “But that will be for the next charity to learn from and decide how to put those protections in place.”

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